In networks, e.g., peer to peer or other networks, there may be situations where one device may desire to transmit the same information to multiple devices in its local vicinity. In such situations, it would be more efficient if the one device could transmit a multicast traffic signal which could be received by the multiple devices rather than repeating the same signal over multiple unicast peer to peer connections. One simple approach to implementing multicast is to allocate connection scheduling resources to each of the possible peer to peer connection alternatives that is possible in a multicast group, and then make a single multicast traffic transmission after scheduling has been resolved. However, this approach results in a high usage of connection scheduling resources for situations in which a multicast group includes a large number of members or in which there may be a large number of different multicast groups competing for traffic transmission opportunities. In addition, at different times, there may be different balances between peer to peer connections which would like to transmit unicast traffic and multicast groups which would like to transmit multicast traffic.
In view of the above, it would be beneficial if new more efficient and/or more flexible methods and apparatus for multicast connection scheduling were developed